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Eighty-three percent (83%) place a higher priority on encouraging immigrants to speak English as their primary language. Just 13% take the opposite view and say it is more important for Americans to learn other languages.

In his comments, Obama emphasized the economic benefits of learning a second language: “If you have a foreign language, that is a powerful tool to get a job.” Data suggests that most voters see the issue in a broader context.

A separate survey found that one factor fueling the anger over immigration is the belief that most government officials encourage immigrants to retain the culture of their home country. This helps explain why voters who are angry about immigration are primarily angry at the government, not immigrants. Among those angry about immigration, 59% believe most government officials encourage immigrants to retain their home country culture.

While I'm not opposed to students learning a second language, I simply wonder why this is a presidential issue.

Because Obama can't answer the question honestly. He knows that the vast majority of Americans want an end to compulsory bilingual education, defined as herding non-English speaking kids into classes taught in Spanish, often in spite of the fact that Spanish isn't the primary language of the kids in question (In NY and CA, kids from Asia and Africa have been assigned to bilingual Spanish classes over their parents' objections because there were no classes in their native languages), but his base is strongly in favor of it. Teachers receive fluency pay for being bilingual, activists continue to Balkanize the US and Latino "leaders" get to keep their constituency dependent and ignorant. These are no-win positions if they are discussed honestly, but if Obama came out against that, his base would freak, so he has to change the subject. Now, instead of discussing bilingual education, we're discussion whether English-speaking kids need to learn a second language, with the implication being that those who raised the English issue are anti-education. It's a clumsy straw man argument, but since the mainstream media won't call him on it, and McCain seems to think that picking up independent votes requires that he run against his own party, the comment stands unexamined by all but those who are really paying attention, and as we all know, those people won't decide the election.

Hannity brought up an interesting question today. What languages does Obama speak? Does anyone know?

After the divorce of his parents, Obama's mother married a Muslim from Indonesia. They moved to Jakarta and for two years he attended a school with mandatory classes in the Koran. His younger sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, says he was a strong male presence in her life and that it was a happy time.

"Barack still speaks Indonesian, has a fondness for the country," Ng said in 2005.

"Back home people think of him as one of us, or at least one who understands us," he says, adding that they are delighted to find that Obama speaks passable Bahasa, the language spoken in Indonesia and Malaysia.